On April 26, 2013, Manhattan Borough President, Scott Stringer hosted a “Start-Up City” Conference. This conference included a Mayoral Forum on the Future of NYC’s Entrepreneurial Economy. At this event, the Democratic Mayoral candidates were asked their opinions on the short term rental ban and its impact on the vacation rental industry. Here is the video recording of the Forum.

The Mayoral Panel begins at 4 hours and 24 minutes into the video. The question regarding short-term rentals is posed at 5 hours and 11 minutes into the video.

Saul Albanese, former City Council member Bill de Blasio, Public AdvocateAdolfo Carrión, former Bronx Borough PresidentJohn Liu, NYC Comptroller Christine Quinn, City Council SpeakerBill Thompson, former NYC Comptroller

Ben Smith: To bring it back to some of those companies, what Fred Wilson was talking about this morning, something a lot of tech entrepreneurs find incomprehensible- Are regulations that get in the way of, I guess Airbnb was the business he mentioned, he sort of vilified the hotel lobby, but I think actually, critically for the folks on this stage, he should probably be vilifying the hotel workers union, who is probably somebody you guys talk to more, I mean should, and I wonder in the specific case of Airbnb, should, you know should they be allowed, which is technically illegal in the city, despite being huge and despite providing a kind of affordable rental that you know you can’t get from hotel, Comptroller Liu- do you think they should be allowed to kind of dive into this market, should the government be putting up barriers?

John Liu: Should who? You’re saying…

Ben Smith: The company Airbnb- I don’t know does anybody want to jump in on this who had stronger feelings on Airbnb?

Bill de Blasio: Look I think it is not a question in that case of just access to a service I think this is a different matter when you talk about the fact that we have laws to ensure the quality of any habitation, whether it’s residential or it’s a hotel habitation, the problem with mixing the 2 in an open market is you are exposing folks who live in a building who you know it may be a rental it may be a co-op whatever it is, who live by a set of ground rules about safety and security to folks who are not part of that system and may be only passing through for a few days and that’s not what the residents of the building signed up for, and that’s the court issue.

Christine Quinn: Ben, let me just jump in here, I mean the Public Advocate [Bill de Blasio] is right, you know the issue of Airbnb isn’t really one about technology at its core, I mean we are having across this city, loss of affordable rental units to landlords who are, and this is not necessarily the folks who are on Airbnb, but this is happening simultaneously, to landlords who are converting their residential units into tourist hotels, the night of Hurricane Sandy, there was a building collapse on 8th Avenue in Chelsea, every person who was in the building that night was a tourist, all who came to NYC through one travel company, now that building wasn’t up to code, in part I think because the landlord didn’t have the same urgency because people weren’t living there, two, it was 15 or 20 units of affordable housing that were gone in Chelsea, that’s not allowed, by law you are not allowed to take rental apartments and make them hotel units, now the issue.

Ben Smith: right but the issue is, this is an incredibly popular company and service and operated globally.

Christine Quinn: Wait, wait, wait, but the issue we should take from this isn’t that laws on housing and safety get trumped by the potential of entrepreneurship , but what we do need to take from this is that we need to add tech entrepreneurs more into the conversation about government, because had Airbnb entered the conversation earlier, there might have been different relief that could be offered to them in Albany, and in fact, my office is in conversation with them now to see if there is some way to thread the needle differently for them and others, so I think what we have to take from this is not a good idea overrides fundamental laws of NY but we need to have this sector more front and center in the conversations as other stake holders have been.

Ben Smith: Mr. Carrion, I mean this isn’t, it’s not like this is a theoretical question, I mean Airbnb is all over the place, people use it all the time, I mean, can the city catch up?

Adolfo Carrión: I’m not entirely convinced it is a gigantic issue, it is an important issue though, but it speaks to something else that is happening around the world and that we have to catch up with here in NYC, my daughter is doing her Spring Semester Junior year in Barcelona, so we went to visit her, and guess what we used a service to find a room, to find an affordable room in a European city and if you’re buying hotel space in any city, any major city in the world, you know one- it’s priced very competitively, so it speaks to some larger issues, we have a very high occupancy rate or a very low vacancy rate of hotel rooms in NYC, people want to come here, I think we have to take a public policy posture, we grew to 52 million tourists last year, that industry generates 350,000 jobs, 90,000 of those jobs are in the hotel sector, that sector can continue to grow, we need to figure out ways to make NYC much more user friendly, so that people are not exploiting those opportunities to take a unit that we need for affordable housing for a NY family, and turning it into an unsafe situation and a for profit situation for them, the rules don’t even apply, obviously they are defying every rule, every law, they are making the building unsafe.

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How exactly “they are making a building unsafe” by hosting a perfectly civilized European or American traveling family in their apartment ? What’s unsafe about me hosting tourists in my 1BR apartment that costs me $3,200 per month in rent? Does a 1-br that costs $3,200 monthly in rent qualify as “affordable housing” which I am here accused of taking away from a New York family? Or maybe that poor New York family, that is in need of the affordable (read subsidized / rent-controlled) housing should consider a less expensive area of NYC than Chelsea ?
These Mayoral Candidates sound ridiculously clueless and unwilling to even bother thinking of the subject they are so readily “just jump in here”. Seems like Christine Quinn really believes that the building on 8th Avenue collapsed during the night of hurricane Sandy primarily because it was occupied by tourists (did she take a basic physics course in school or understands how hurricane works?). She also assumes that if not for the tourists, the building would have otherwise served as affordable housing in Chelsea for New Yorkers, and not have been rented out by its owner accordingly to the area’s high market value, that’s not exactly affordable in an expensive desirable area such as Chelsea. Does she understand how free market economy works? And how about the thousands of new yorkers offering their rented apartments to tourists to help pay their bills using their own resources and means of free economy and not relying on government regulations and subsidies of any kind to be able to afford their housing? How someone so deprived of common sense and basic understanding of how things work, be it hurricanes, rental market or AirBnB, can even run for a mayor and be considered as a potential top manager of such a complex enterprise like New York City?

So, Adolfo Carrión says people should not be allowed to exploit opportunities which take away the supply of affordable housing in the city and allow tourists in residential buildings… but yet has not problem using AirBnB when he traveled to Barcelona.
What a hypocrite.